George Perkins Marsh Online Research Center

The George Perkins Marsh Research Center provides access to transcriptions and
images of selected letters in Marsh's correspondence. With a generous grant from the
Woodstock Foundation we have transcribed over 650 letters from the University manuscript
collection and from Marsh's letters located at other institutions.

Major topics in the correspondence selected for electronic publication are:

The American Civil War. The letters present the war from two
perspectives: as it was experienced by those in Europe and by those in New England,
particularly in Vermont. Marsh, an ardent Unionist, wrote from Italy, where there were
many active Confederate sympathizers in the American expatriate community and among
English residents. The view from Vermont is represented by Albert G. Peirce, a Burlington
grocer, who sent Marsh detailed accounts of the war as it affected the city. Other
Vermonters and Charles Eliot Norton, the Harvard luminary and an active abolitionist,
also wrote of their hopes and opinions as the war progressed.

Vermont geography. Creating an accurate geographical description of
the complex Vermont landscape remained a problem throughout the nineteenth century. Marsh
and his brother Charles, a Woodstock, Vermont, farmer, made several attempts to measure
the elevation of Vermont mountains, and Marsh kept in contact with leading geographers of
the day to find more accurate instruments to measure temperature and ascertain the exact
landmass of the state.

Nineteenth century sculpture. Marsh's friendship with Hiram Powers,
begun when both were children on neighboring Woodstock farms, led to a correspondence in
which Powers not only described the trials and tribulations of a working sculptor, but
discussed his ideas about classical and contemporary works in some detail. Powers's
aesthetics are most clearly expressed in his letters to Caroline Crane Marsh regarding
the bust he made of her, now in the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont. In
addition, Marsh corresponded with Larkin G. Mead, then a young sculptor from Barre, who
designed the statue of "Agriculture" atop the State House, and with John Norton Pomeroy
of Burlington about the statue of Ethan Allen, carved in Italy under Marsh's supervision,
that now stands above Allen's grave in Burlington's Green Mount Cemetery.

Nineteenth century public architecture. The rebuilding of the Vermont
State House in 1857 provides a detailed picture of how American connoisseurs and
architects designed public buildings. The collection contains over ninety letters by
Thomas W. Silloway, the architect, to Marsh, one of the building commissioners,
discussing appropriate forms for each element, as well as the politics involved in
construction. These are enhanced by letters from the building superintendent, Thomas E.
Powers of Woodstock, from another commissioner, Norman Williams of Woodstock, and from
state legislators and private citizens caught up in what was a highly controversial
undertaking.

Creation of the Smithsonian Institution. The evolution of the museum
and its support for scientific expeditions and collection development are documented in
the correspondence between Marsh and Spencer Fullerton Baird which began in 1847 and
ended with Marsh's death in 1882. Marsh was instrumental in securing a post at the
Smithsonian for Baird, who eventually became its second director and founded the
Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The two men also worked together to
increase the Smithsonian's collections and facilitate the exchange of scientific
information with Italy.

In addition the letters provide information on nineteenth century
domestic life, the politics surrounding Vermont's railroads, local and national social
and political developments, the tangled relationships between the European powers, and
other subjects of interest to educated and engaged individuals of the time.

The Center also includes the full text of contemporary publications that are related
to the major topics of the letters.

Biography: When Man and Nature was published in 1864 it was immediately
hailed as a major contribution to the field of physical geography. Now a classic of
environmental literature, its author, George Perkins Marsh, was one of the first to
recognize and described in detail the significance of human action in transforming the
natural world.

Lawyer, diplomat, and scholar, Marsh, was born on March 15, 1801 at Woodstock,
Vermont. In 1820 he graduated with highest honors from Dartmouth. He immediately tried
teaching, but finding it distasteful, studied law with his father, Charles Marsh.
Admitted to the bar in 1825, he practiced in Burlington, Vermont, where he became
prominent in his profession. On April 10, 1828, he married Harriet Buell of Burlington.
They had two sons; the eldest died a few days before his mother in 1833. Marsh immersed
himself in the study of Icelandic and other Scandinavian languages, beginning a life long
career as a philologist and linguist. Six years after his first wife's death, he married
Caroline Crane of Berkley, Massachusetts. Already well known as a lawyer, business man
and scholar, in 1835 he was elected to the Governor's Council. In 1843 he ran for
Congress as a Whig, and during three successive terms proved himself a cogent speaker in
support of a high tariff and in opposition to slavery and the Mexican War. He served on
the committee that established and guided the future of the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1849 President Taylor appointed Marsh U.S. Minister to Turkey. He aided refugees
from central European revolutions of 1848, and in the summer of 1852 he was sent to
Athens on a special mission. He collected specimens for the Smithsonian during an
intensive tour of Egypt and Palestine.

Recalled by a new administration in 1854, Marsh labored to mend his bankrupt fortunes,
to act as Vermont railroad commissioner, fish commissioner, and to lead a commission
formed to rebuild the Vermont State House. He lectured throughout the northeast and
mid-West and taught courses on the English language at Columbia College and the Lowell
Institute. Having joined and campaigned for the Republican party in 1856, he was sent by
President Lincoln as the first United States minister to the new kingdom of Italy in
1861, a post he held for the remaining twenty-one years of his life. He won admirers in
the Italian government and a greater reputation as a scholar by his mastery of Italian
affairs and his writings on language and environmental matters. He died on July 23, 1882
at Vallombrosa, near Florence, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome.

David Lowenthal's George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation. Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2000.
Caroline Crane Marsh's Life and Letters of George Perkins Marsh. Vol. I. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1888.
Biographical sketches can also be found in national biographical
dictionaries.

Technical Information The text files were created using WordPerfect 7.0 as an SGML editor and the DTD for
historical documents developed by Dr. David R. Chesnutt of the University of South
Carolina and the Model Editions Partnership (MEP). The SGML publication used DynaText, a
software package developed by EBT Corporation of Providence Rhode Island and granted to
the University of Vermont under their educational grant program. WordPerfect 9.0 was used
as the final editor and parser.The actual coding depended largely on programs James P. Tranowski wrote to process the
letters. Ellen Mazur Thomson did the bulk of it, although Cheryl Morrison and several
graduate students connected with the MEP project at the University of South Carolina also
worked on the letters. William Hicks of Tyrone, Pennsylvania, provided additional coding
of the Correspondence Lists. Aaron Shamp coded the footnotes, entered copy editing
corrections, parsed and cleaned all the SGML files and entities.Paul Philbin and Marcie A. Crocker, at the Bailey/Howe Library and Hope A. Greenberg,
at the Academic Computing Service served as technical advisers for the hardware and
software.Original web publication came through DynaWeb, also an EBT grant program.

On November 26, 2008 The George Perkin Marsh Online Research Center was migrated from its original location http://bailey2.uvm.edu/specialcollections/gpmorc.html to its new home at the CDI. Documents were migrated from SGML to XML using openSP and XSL.

Contributors David A. Donath, the Advisory Board of Directors, and the Board of Trustees of the
Woodstock Foundation provided the financial support that made this project possible.
Bruce Kirby, archivist at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and archivists at t h e
Houghton Library, Harvard University, the New York Historical Society, and the Archives
of American Art provided copies of Marsh correspondence in their collections for us to
transcribe and publish. The Vermont Historical Society allowed us to reproduce
photographs in their collection.Connell Gallagher, head of the Special Collections Department, and Dr. Elizabeth H.
Dow, created the project; Dr. Dow acted as Project Director. Ellen Mazur Thomson was
Project Manager.Faculty and staff members of the Special Collections Department gave us specialized
and expert reference: David Blow, Ingrid Bower, Sylvia Bugbee, Karen Campbell, Sylvia
Knight and Jeffrey Marshall.Dr. Robert H. Rogers of the Classics Department, transcribed and annotated many of the
Greek and Latin phrases used in the letters. Dr. Ralph H. Orth translated German
materials, Ellen Mazur Thomson translated those in French.Dr. Ralph H. Orth, Professor Emeritus of the University of Vermont, created the
transcription protocols for the letters. He transcribed most of the Powers and Norton
letters and provided notes for their correspondence with Marsh. John Thomas transcri b ed
Marsh's letters to Baird and Jacob Colie transcribed the Peirce letters. Eileen N. Brown
contributed notes.Ellen Mazur Thomson selected the letters, designed the [original] web pages and wrote the
introductory text.

The initial collection of George Perkins Marsh Papers came to the University of
Vermont through donations made by Caroline Crane Marsh in the late 1880's and has had
material material added from many sources since. It now consists of eighteen cartons,
with material dating from 1812 to 1929.

The largest part of the collection, Marsh's own
papers, have been arranged in the following order: correspondence; diaries, notebooks;
printed material; and notes, lists, and miscellaneous manuscripts and memorabilia. The
correspondence consists primarily of incoming letters, with some copies of outgoing
correspondence. Prominent persons represented in this section include: Spencer Baird;
George Bancroft; Frederick Billings; Rufus Choate; Henry Clay; Giuseppe Garibaldi;
Ulysses S. Grant; Asa Gray; Arnold Guyot; Joseph Henry; Andrew Johnson; Charles C.
Jewett; Justin S. Morrill; Carl Christian Rafn; and Frederick Wislizenus. Diaries date
from the period 1864-82, while the notebooks range over such topics as English and
foreign languages, scrapbooks, visiting lists and address books and natural history.

The
printed items are largely copies of Marsh's own writings, from The
Camel (1856) to Man and Nature (1864). The last
section consists of loose notes taken by Marsh for his writings, notecards and
bibliographical lists of books in the Marsh library that Frederick Billings purchased for
the University of Vermont after Marsh's death, miscellaneous manuscripts and various
memorabilia such as medals, diplomatic pouches and certificates of award.

The Caroline Crane Marsh section of the collection, a gift from David Lowenthal in
1958-59, has been arranged separately at the end of the Papers, in the following order:
correspondence; printed material; manuscripts of Mrs. Marsh's poetry; translations and
other writings (including the unpublished Volume Two of her Life and Letters of George
Perkins Marsh; and diaries from the years 1851 to 1880. See also David Lowenthal's
George Perkins Marsh for a list of other manuscript collections containing Marsh
material.